Notifications should show generic user icon if user does not have an avatar

[Conscious User]

Binary package hint: empathy

Currently, if an user does not have an avatar, Empathy shows their notification bubbles without any kind of icon. This is inconsistent with the "Ubuntu" chat theme that is being used in Lucid now, as this theme shows a generic user icon in those cases. Plus, showing a generic user icon in the bubble would make more evident that the bubble is coming from Empathy.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Mar 10 10:29:49 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20100310)
Package: empathy 2.29.92-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.utf8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-16.25-generic
SourcePackage: empathy
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-16-generic i686
XsessionErrors: (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1070): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

I don't think this is not a duplicate of Bug #525189. The proposed solution is different and 525189 has just been refused by upstream.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Empathy developer says that he can see the "person" image whenever a contact without avatar sends him a message. but I tried this with notify-osd and notification-daemon and in case the result was same i.e. no "person" icon. Now I really dont know if this is upstream or downstream issue.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

I did a "apt-get source empathy" in Karmic to quickly check this out.

In file empathy-status-icon.c, a pixbuf is loaded with function "empathy_misc_get_pixbuf_for_notification", which can return a NULL. If the pixbuf is NULL, then the notification bubble never receives an icon.

So I went hunting for this "empathy_misc_get_pixbuf_for_notification" function in empathy-misc.c. It returns the avatar pixpuf if it exists, or an icon with an icon_name given as a parameter.

Okay, back to empathy-status-icon.c to see from where icon_name is coming from. It comes from "priv->event->icon_name'... but I don't see this "priv->event->icon_name" being set anywhere, I guess that's where the problem is.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

One thing that might work is replacing, in function "empathy_misc_get_pixbuf_for_notification" , the call for "empathy_pixbuf_from_icon_name_sized (icon_name, size)" by a call for "pixbuf_avatar = empathy_pixbuf_from_icon_name_sized ("stock_person", size)".

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

Sorry, ignore the "pixbuf_avatar = " part in last comment.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

Can someone more competent than me see if what I said makes sense? :)